This interpretation of physical science, notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of physicists have treated it with silent contempt, cannot be left without attention from philosophical critique. If scientists have the right to say: the dog barks, the wind blows, — then philosophical critique, necessarily interested in the social and educational significance of doctrines, is compelled to pause here.

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V. I. LENIN

[136-138] The majority of adherents of the new philosophy appeal exclusively to scientists who stand for energeticist physics and decisively reject mechanistic physics. But the extreme adherents of energeticist physics constitute, on the whole, a very insignificant minority among physicists. For the most part, physicists remain mechanists; they, of course, modify mechanical representations in order to reconcile them with new discoveries, for they are not scholastics, after all. But they constantly attempt to depict and explain physical phenomena by means of motions accessible to sensory perception.

One should not, on the other hand, forget that if energetics has indeed furnished a series of elegant theories and expositions, we owe almost all the great discoveries of recent times to mechanicist physicists, and all these discoveries are bound up with attempts to represent to oneself the material structure of phenomena. One should reflect upon this circumstance.

In striving to impart geometric rigor to theoretical physics, energetics decided simply to transform it into a more compact and economical exposition of experimental data,—but can the theory of physics be reduced to a mere instrument of economical exposition? Can it completely banish hypothesis from science, which has always been fecundated by hypothesis? Ought it not constantly to orient itself toward the discovery of the real through theories which, as we see in mechanicist theories, are always anticipations of experience, attempts to represent the real vividly to oneself?

Does it not follow from this that to construct a philosophy of physics relying exclusively only on purely energeticist physicists means to narrow in an incomprehensible manner the base upon which this philosophy ought to be erected? The new philosophy appeals in essence for confirmation of its ideas only to those who may be disposed in its favor, and they constitute an insignificant minority. This is, of course, a convenient trick, but a trick nonetheless.

And are they really so disposed in its favor as it imagines?

This is more than doubtful. Almost all the scientists to whom pragmatism or so-called nominalism appeals have guarded themselves against it with serious reservations, including Poincaré. Let us now turn to these scientists.

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